Don’t Be Fooled: North Korea Is Getting Ready To Provoke

North Korea appears to be laying the groundwork to begin a new round of provocations, which could very well take the form of a missile and/or nuclear test.

Despite its deliberate (and successful, in the U.S. at least) attempts to portray itself as an irrational actor, North Korea’s provocations usually follow a well-worn playbook. This begins with North Korea mounting a charm offensive that is aimed primarily at South Korean audiences. The purpose of this charm offensive is to create hope that Pyongyang could be turning over a new leaf. Amid this charm offensive, North Korea quietly demands that South Korea and/or the United States do something that Pyongyang knows full well they won’t do. When they predictably fail to meet the demand, Pyongyang insists that it is being provoked, and uses this supposed provocation to justify its brazen actions. This allows North Korea to blame its own actions on South Korea and the U.S., which can be convincing to some audiences in China, South Korea, and even the West.

North Korea has carefully put all these pieces into place over the past few weeks.

First, it has launched a huge charm offensive containing more carrots than usual. For example, it has agreed to hold the first family reunions in years between Koreans living on opposite sides of the 38th Parallel. The reunions are scheduled to occur for five days starting on February 20. Important constituent groups in South Korea place a great deal of importance on these reunions, and would be extremely disappointed if they were called off.

Secondly, earlier this month an inter-Korean committee discussing the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) reached an agreement to allow some internet connectivity in the business park in North Korea. It will be the first time any internet has been allowed at KIC in a decade. In announcing the agreement, a Ministry of Unification spokesperson said, “Officials and employees in the North’s border city will be able to use most of the online services now available in South Korea.” The prospect of having the internet at KIC is attractive to the many South Korean businesses that operate there, as well as to those hoping that North Korea will gradually open up to the outside world.

Thirdly, as my colleague Ankit reported, North and South Korean officials held two rounds of talks at the border town of Panmunjom on Wednesday. The talks were held at North Korea’s request. South Korean officials said they were “pleasantly surprised” (in the words of the BBC) to receive the North’s invitation. South Korea’s delegation was led by Deputy National Security Adviser Kim Kyou-hyun, making these the most senior-level talks the two Koreas have held since 2007. Before the meeting began, NSA Kim declared, “This is an opportunity to open a new era of the Korean peninsula. I would like to attend the meeting with ‘open attitude and mind’ to study the opportunity.”

There have also been some less noticed overtures made to Japan and the United States. For example, Kyodo News Agency has reported that Japan and North Korea held talks last month in Vietnam. Tokyo immediately denied the reports, with a Shinzo Abe spokesperson saying that Japan cut off official talks with North Korea after it launched a missile over Japan in 2012. That being said, last May North Korea’s state media announced what was supposed to be a secret trip to Pyongyang by a close Shinzo Abe aide. There have also been reports that the same aide met with North Korean officials last October in northwest China. Thus, the Abe administration’s denial of the meeting in Vietnam last month cannot be taken at face value.

North Korea has been stingier toward the U.S. during this current charm offensive. That being said, it did raise expectations that it might be amenable to releasing the American-Korean prisoner Kenneth Bae, before once again shooting down that possibility. Moreover, Donald Gregg, the former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, is currently leading a delegation to North Korea for talks with government officials. Gregg’s trip came at the invitation of North Korea’s Foreign Ministry.

If all this seems too good to be true, that’s because it almost certainly is. Since at least as far back as the middle of January, North Korea has been quietly demanding that South Korea and the U.S. cancel their annual military exercise, Foal Eagle, which will begin on February 24 and run through April. This demand has grown progressively louder as the exercise’s start date nears, and North Korea has threatened to withdraw from the planned family reunions if the military exercise takes place.

As North Korea well knows, there is virtually no possibility that the U.S. and the ROK will agree to call off the exercise, which is precisely the reason it has made the demand. At most, the allies might agree to forgo some parts of the drill that the North sees as most provocative. Even then, they would only do so quietly with no formal announcement.

Pyongyang and Seoul plan to continue discussions ostensibly aimed at finding a compromise that allows for the family reunions to move forward. These are likely to be futile as North Korea almost certainly doesn’t want to find common ground, but rather wants to use the Foal Eagle exercise to blame Seoul for a breakdown in relations.

It’s possible that it may be content with stopping there. However, given how much effort it has put into the charm offensive in recent weeks, North Korea likely has a larger goal in mind. The best case scenario is that the charm offensive has been a ruse to woo China. Chinese-North Korean relations have continued to deteriorate in recent months, with some of the discord playing itself out in public. Beijing consistently urges all parties on the Peninsula to take measures that improve peace and stability, and North Korea may hope its charm offensive — along with blaming the breakdown on South Korea and the U.S. — will put it back in China’s good graces.

The more troubling scenario is that the charm offensive has been laying the groundwork for another round of provocations. If so, there have been a number of signs that suggest that it will take the form of a missile test, likely to be followed closely by the country’s fourth nuclear test. Last week Johns Hopkins University’s 38 North said satellite imagery showed that upgrades to a launching pad were nearing completion, and when finished would enable the site to launch larger rockets.

Then, on Monday, ROK Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin told the National Assembly that North Korea had finished preparations for a fourth nuclear test, while adding that there were no signs that one was imminent. Still, North Korea’s nuclear tests are almost always preceded by a missile test, which North Korea disingenuously portrays as part of a peaceful space program. It then uses the international community’s “hostile” response to its space exploration to justify a nuclear test.

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why would this guy instigate anything? He has 2 options: live like a god or die within 5 minutes of starting any shit? I'm expected to believe that he would choose option 2 ?? Smells like bullshit to me.

Paging Denis Rodman to the red courtesy phone! I guess they are queer for each other...who the FUCK cares about NK? Do you? He may just start WWIII, but who really cares, the ayatolla of rock en rolla, could do the same, but the liberal-tarians, think their JUST GREAT...you guys were blowing Putin a few months back too, weren't ya? LOL...

At least we can all hate Obamao, and the congress and the fed...but that is where were divert...sad really!

WORLD WAR I ... remember how it started? it did not made sense to anybody except the newspapers ...many events follow the same script as Mr. Armstrong would explain it to you is directly related to 1+1 = 2, so everything according to the rules etc.

"The U.S. and Iran may have miles to go in their negotiations over curtailing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but the ease in hostility has already produced a boomlet in American travel to Iran. Three U.S.-based tour operators say they’ve seen a surge of bookings and questions about Iran in recent months. They’ve also heard encouragement from Iranian government officials, who met in New York with several U.S. tour operators during Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s visit to the city in September..."

The tone of US-Iran relations shifted notably in January, coinciding with a similar change in the pulse and direction of world markets.

Ya, go travel to Iran, they just LOVE Americans...especially when they have blindfolds over their eyes and hoods over their heads...

The Persian people, some like us, some don't....just like EVERYONE else! Hell there are Americans on ZH who hate America...so keep up the generalizations dolts, everything is black and white for you, in a world the shade of gray.

I shake my head in disbelief that so many on this board see no problems with Iran, or Putin for that matter, party on Garth....got meds do ya?

They actually do. Anything western is very popular, especially among the young. You are confusing government rhetoric with what Iranian people really want. One of the best examples is how profusely young Iranian men apologize to you if you catch them unshaven. The last thing they want to be mistaken for are the bearded religious lunatics, they despise them.

Oh, and if you ever want to go to a great rave party first choice would be Beirut, second would be Teheran.

LOL, see there ya go, black and white, that is all you guys know...but the world is a shade of gray! Why don't you just move to either of those two places and see the real deal, instead of spouting what you read off the internet fella?

Yes, because the North Koreans certainly do enjoy their current "freedom".

The IMF couldn't care less about NK. In order for that country to be useful to them they must first be "liberated". Then, once they have been conditioned to perform for rewards, they can later to be coaxed to perform for the benefit of the bankers. That is still a long ways down the timeline. If they marched in and took over now they would still have a starved workforce that is used to making half-assed attempts at production using decades old tools and methods. It would end up being a money pit for them. better to let the MIC surgically remove the main impediment to their goals and then the caring and loving western nations will rush in and modernize them, and make NK just like their country - indebted.

"IMF does not hesitate to utilize fear and ignorance through media misinformation, to utilize NK for WAR preparing insentives."

That is what I was alluding to in my statement. In their present state though, they are useless to the IMF. They need to be converted to a country striving to become middle class citizens - and thusly addicted to debt.

if I saw Kim Jong Un on the street i would slap the s--t out of him just for looking like an fat-little-daddy-s-boy. his provocations are the kinds of things real men laugh at, like that little guy at the bar trying to get attention from the big guys by throwing his weight around when it's crowded. ironically enough, they are the easiest to co-opt.

Know thy enemy.
Tyler is doing us a favor , the collective groupthink here would stop anyone here from visiting the Diplomat website,
where they at least openly give out their bullshit justifications prior to general release.
I despise Bolton ,but always listen closely to all his appearances.

North Korea is always on the verge of internal conflict due to ever present famine caused by trade embargo. They've tried to hide this fact, but in the end, the NK government will have to expand, grab up resources, distract the population with war, or end up with a rebellion on their hands. The frustrations in diplomacy between China and NK are likely all staged. China has been pulling the strings in that country since the Korean War, and of course, the Banksters control China. NK would be a pretty good option as a catalyst for a Pacific regional conflict. China would never allow the U.S. to occupy NK soil. It's all just dominos, folks. The Banksters set them up - sometimes they knock them down, and sometimes they don't.

I'm supposed to give a shit about a backward country that uses 70's Lincoln Town Cars as Presidential limos and think Dennis Rodman is still relevant to the US culture? These never ending conflicts with NK are always a distraction from real issue.

You should know about bullshit, because what you said is complete bullshit. What do you call 28 thousand soldiers on the border of an insane nuclear dictatorship? Hostages. As long as NK demands are "reasonable" we'll pay the tribute because we just don't want to deal with the problem.

North Korea is an absolute Godsend for the military industrial complex. The occasional lobbed shells and harmless rants sprayed out by that poverty stricken little nation provides sufficient hype to justify trillions in additional projects. It's almost like the US military wants them, no, NEEDS them, to stay just the way they are.

China likes the status quo because North Korea is their ill-tempered bulldog on a leash. It barks and barks, and while the neighbors complain, China can just shrug and say "dogs will be dogs!". Everyone knows that if China let the bulldog off the leash, it would attack, and the neighbors would put it down. Then they wouldn't have an "unaccountable, uncontrollable" menace with which to indirectly threaten their neighbors and the world.

What he said had a complete lack of insight. NK is not going to go attacking it's neighbors like a rabid dog. NK barks when it wants a treat, and since nobody, not even China, wants to deal with the little shit hole they toss it a treat, as long as it doesn't demand too much.

Complete, huh? You're a shithead. Perhaps using your thesis, you can explain North Korea's shelling of one of the South's military installations and the sinking of one its submarines, both in the past few years. History, bitch--learn some.

Has there been a counter attack? No, and that is my point. The government may not be able to feed it's people but they could write text books about how to leverage a limited nuclear power to extort the world, even China. It's an insight you don't grasp. NK isn't a dog, but an itch that the world can't reach, so it's tolerated.

I disagree. North Korea is a stooge of China's greater interests. Would you argue that they developed nuclear weaponry and so much other military hardware without China's assistance? Without China enforcing the status quo, North Korea would have already folded and been assimilated by the South.

Give it a break on the MIC okay, without it, we would be speaking German, or Russian, or whatever...what is it about you liberal-tarians, that a strong defense can be a good thing...yeah, the problem is the masters...we can agree on that much. No solving this riddle till the pot boils over, hope you all are stacking as much lead as i am...ROFLMAO!

Hey pudgy stooge, following me around like some lost puppy, you idiots talk about red pill blue pill and you take niether...lemme give you a heads up fluffy, you better pick a side and soon, cocksmoker!

Perhaps, but why beat the dead horse that is NK? They are harmless and are only allowed to exist until the MIC can get the US people maneuvered into position to accept an attack on KJU... That and gauging backlash from the PRC... Same as it always was, rinse and repeat...

Exactly my point... it's not like the clowns perpetrating this ponzi ever come up with anything new...why should the reporting be expected to be more original? Let's face it, this what the 'news' is gonna look like until the wheels fall off, bitch! (Quote from Motley Crue {if ya really want, I can post the video})

I merley speak the truth fellas, you speak yours, and we'll see who is right in the end. I have been attacked here since day one for speaking my mind, so I go on the offensive, like me or not, I am no govt shill...I have the same disdain for it as you. But since we are a shade of gray apart, you call me a lunatic, or whatever; I just wish I could cut through all this BS for you, so you can see the light, but you refuse! Good luck with your neive thought process.

yes, seems the bots picked up too many triggers and the call was put out. if nothing else, this place has been a fascinating open experiment on herding cats and other assorted wild animals. when it could get real interesting is when a critical mass of the cats figure out that they are being herded and precisely how.

"Give it a break on the MIC okay, without it, we would be speaking German, or Russian, or whatever..."

Oh, yeah; the punks that dropped the bomb on Japan but stood back and let Russia carve up most of Eastern Europe and the Caucuses for decades instead of dropping one or two more and pushing the evil iron curtain right back to the pre-WW2 borders or further?

Why did the US 'fight' a long semi-global Cold War in Asia, let the fuckers nest in Cuba and Central America, etc. IF one or two payloads over St. Petersburg would have precluded wasting decades in American interventions -trillions in 'policing' and 'nation building' and 'supporting our allies' ????

The MIC is the biggest leech on this pig and has been since the Nazi rear-guard was quietly put on the payroll and waltzed past the security check-points at Langley.

One of the saddest days in history for the MIC was the fall of the USSR as they no longer had a boggieman to vilify, plot and plan against, build up billions in weapons of war and removed the primary purpose for our military deterrent... Since then they have been stoking the "global terrorism" mantra which they created themselves... All to keep the public in fear of yet another boogieman,.. It's all bullshit and time for it to stop...

LOL, I see history is not your strong suit...I do wonder this, do you know why we dropped the abomb fella?

Let me give you a clue...to invade Japan the conventional way, would have cost over a million American/allied soldiers lives. We killed a bunch of innocents, sure we did, it was not pretty, matter of fact very ugly. In the end it saved lives, net net, but you all would never see it that way.

I never said the MIC was great and good, but a necessary evil...because the inherent nature of man is evil in this world. There are a lot of folks out there that would love to see us fry.

As to the CCCP, yeah to start another world war, just after defeating the axis, would have been the thing to do eh? Wasn't there enough death for you all, that is the flipping hypocricy that I talk about here.

Ever microwaved popcorn? Ever spoken on a cell phone? Maybe you should read up on that, just two little things developed by the MIC, that we use every day. There can be some good to come out of war, in that regard. But I will be misconstrued as some govt shill here in anarchy land for pointing this out...oh well...downvote me bros, it doesn't mean a hill of beans to me.

"The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing ... I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon."-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"It is my opinion that the use of the barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan ... My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages."-- Admiral William D. Leahy, presidential Chief of Staff to FDR and Truman

"My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender."-- General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of US Army forces in the Pacific, on why he thought the dropping of the atom bombs was unnecessary

"The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did not defeat Japan ... It seems clear that air supremacy and its later exploitation over Japan proper was the major factor which determined the timing of Japan's surrender and obviated any need for invasion."-- United States Strategic Bombing Survey, 1946 report

Sad little mystery downvoters, you use the red arrow pretty well, back it up sometime will ya? You all haven't got a clue as to what is really going on in the world, yet you are the experts...petty little tin-pot junkers is all you are.

You have no arguement to superior logic, so therefore you junk anon....good for you! ROFLMAO

Meh..... Who cares? He will stomp and scream, then old Yeller will print him some funny money Bernanke bucks, and he'll slither away for a few more months. Probably pound his pud to his life sized Dennis Rodman poster. More MIC propaganda.

yep. perrty much. "there's only room in this world for one irrational actor...and that's the USA."

And if we go according to the script presented in this article we'll launch a pre-emptive strike "just because no one saw it coming"...least of all "the people in charge" making sure that doesn't happen.

North Korea is China's bitch. They'll let him do as much as they allow him to do and not the slightest bit more. It's China's "instability on command" card. North Korea is a puppet state. Pay more attention to who's pulling the strings.

To counter your argument that north Korea is a full puppet of China..... Well, if it is a puppet, they aren't getting paid much. The country is starving, literally. That would mean that China is a cheapscape. OOps, I lost my own argument, China is never generous to others (except their own politicians).

HOW ABOUT ultra powdered Uranium 238 wafting around our troops every where we go. The Romans salted the Cathaginian's wheat fields which settled a pesky rival for good. The U.S. is salting the earth (every where the troops fire weapons) with "depleated uranium" highly radioactive. I never voted for this or any of the multiple actions our SICK government has engaged in.

When vengence comes upon us please remember I never voted for nor supported poisoning your children. Please remember.

Better to keep one's eye on Ukraine, that is where the high stakes game is underway, we are talking about NATO moving to within a few hundreds of miles of Moscow, taking over a nation that is nearly half Russian and occuping the Crimea where the Russian Black Sea fleet is based. North Korea plays some bizzare games, no doubt, but NATO is launching the most amitious offensive since Hitler crossed the Soviet borders. Right now the winter olympics are in southern Russia, and the front is quiet, these games will soon be over, everybody goes home, and the USA/EU/NATO will launch the final offensive. Nothing since the Cuban missile crisis has this level of potential. But yes, I think the US military industrial complex is actually so full of it's self and so confident that no matter what games they play, they can not lose, and should they meet a set back, it will be all the more reason to increase military spending even higher, and to increase the total spy program to levels never dreamed of. I think the next 12 months are critical for the world, this is not a game with NK, this is a game with Russia, and don't think China is prepared to lose the only cooprerative nation they have. Plus Syria and Iran are also in the mix and in play.

1939 was no more dangerous than 2014. Given nuclear weapons, 2014 could be more dangerous..

I think Jack may have a point. O'bomb-a has fired most all of the senior military commanders who have any sense or loyalty to America. I really don't have to go into detail about the EU, which pretty much is NATO. There's a whole lot of stupid AND hubris "in charge" of the western world right now, and they can see the writing on the wall with regards to the funny money they have been passing off for the last 100 years. "May you live in interesting times" is the curse. We live in interesting times. 1939 interesting.

Apparently Global-War-Chief Obama is also lost in the 1950s (or has found a new excuse to intervene, which is so 21st Century-ish) as he dispatches bombers, tanks and troops, and initiates "war games" in South Korea. Raw meat for his neo-progressive base which is sure to draw cheers from the neo-cons too. (In contrast with NK: the US is financially capable of a great degree of provocation, relying on plunder from the US taxpayer.)

South Korea interaction with the NORKs is appalling. The drive train in your KIA is made by slave labour in Kaesong - along with many other 'duty free' items.

Another fun fact is that among various NK money spinners has been importing nuclear and radalogical waste from all over N & S Asia for decades. When they finally collapse the North will make Fukushima look like Cape Cod.

If you keep spewing that yankee war dog propaganda, KFC, er, KJU is gonna have to rename your ocean to EAST SEA and BUILD WAR MONUMENTS TO STRIPPERS YOU MADE HAPPY and so on. Better stop while you can, or we'll bribe your Senator, MMAD...

NK is a permanent wildcard suitable for playing by the Great Eye. They've been working this bullshit for a long time. Whenever they need it, they have NK shoot a missile into the ocean. Oh no! It was aimed toward Japan!

Isn't North Korea attitude convenient for all? How could Japan and the US justify more and more advanced weapons without the North Korean "provocations". They'd need to say something about China, the real "risk", and for now that's not possible.

So a decrepit North Korea is supposed to represent a risk for Japan with their skuds on steroid and nuclear devices which leave no radioactivity behind. For god's sake, I wonder if the spies don't make sure that a modicum of parts reach the hermit kingdom so that the "menace" don't look outrageously overblown!

I also know he's associated with at least two organizations, including a magazine published by the center for the national interest, which are little more than pro-Israel hawks pretending to not be neocons.

They said John Foster Dulles had an "inherent bad faith model" of the Soviet Union. He was able to convince us that, not matter what, they would seek to do us harm by subterfuge, that all "good" behavior was a cover for something evil.

Who benefits by keeping things the same in North/South Korea? Private contractors, defense companies, encrusted military edifice. Find the stake holders: they paid for the bullshit you just read.

Less then a year ago in the spring of 2013 the eyes of the world were on North Korea. At the time I wrote an article outlineing how important and dangerous the situation was. North Korea was banging on the drums of war and if things got out of hand it had the potential could become a major disaster. Things have not changed all that much, for more on the impact of a military blow up in that area of the world you can view that post below,

South Korea doesn't want to improve relations with North Korea, and why would they? They're one of America's proxies in the region, and America will accept peace if it is on their terms and ONLY their terms. Accept peace with America and find a shit ton on military bases in your country that won't ever shut down in order to lessen the debt of the merge; why would NK want that?

Additionally, If South Korea merges with North Korea they'd find themselves in the same position as Germany when they were merging with their other half: A massive amount of debt that needs to be paid off. Either way the merging of the two Koreas is at each other's disadvantages from these two point-of-views.

If we were really worried about North Korea we'd work a deal with China and South Korea to just open up the borders and hand out food--outside North Korean territory. Then open up KFC and McDonalds outlets all across NK except not in Pyongyang. But it works better for our strategic interests, and China's, (and certain SK factions as well) to keep NK as a perpetual bogeyman for whenever it suits our purposes. Same for Cuba; our embargo is all that has kept Castro in power, and that's not unintentional.